education policy analysis archives

EPAA/AAPE is a peer-reviewed, open-access, international, multilingual, and multidisciplinary journal designed for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and development analysts concerned with education policies. EPAA/AAPE accepts unpublished original manuscripts in English, Spanish and Portuguese without restriction as to conceptual and methodological perspectives, time or place. EPAA/AAPE publishes issues comprised of empirical articles, commentaries, and special issues at roughly weekly intervals, all of which pertain to educational policy, with direct implications for educational policy.

Florian Klapproth has got his Diploma degree in Psychology in 1999 at Goettingen University, Germany, and has made his PhD at Hildesheim University, Germany, in 2003. From 2003 to 2009, he worked as a Research Assistant at the Institute of Psychology and Working Sciences, Technical University of Berlin. During this time, he accomplished a second book, dealing with waiting and time perception. In April 2010 he obtained his postdoctoral lecture qualification (Habilitation) in Psychology. He is now working at Marburg University as a professor. Florian Klapproth is member of Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Psychologie (German Society for Psychology), European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction, International Society for the Study of Time, and Society for Judgment and Decision Making.

Do Algorithms Homogenize Students’ Achievements in Secondary School Better Than Teachers’ Tracking Decisions?

Florian Klapproth

Abstract

Two objectives guided this research. First, this study examined how well teachers’ tracking decisions contribute to the homogenization of their students’ achievements. Second, the study explored whether teachers’ tracking decisions would be outperformed in homogenizing the students’ achievements by statistical models of tracking decisions. These models were akin to teachers’ decisions in that they were based on the same information teachers are supposed to use when making tracking decisions. It was found that the assignments of students to the different tracks made either by teachers or by the models allowed for the homogenization of the students’ achievements for both test scores and school marks. Moreover, the models’ simulations of tracking decisions were more effective in the homogenization of achievement than were the tracking decisions, if the students assigned to the different tracks were at the center of the achievement distribution. For the remaining students, there was no significant difference found between teachers’ tracking decisions and the models’ simulations thereof. The reason why algorithms produced more homogeneous groups was assumed to be due to the higher consistency of model decisions compared to teacher decisions.